


11 - "hold on to that"

by cyn_00



Series: Moreid one shots [11]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Canon Related, Coma, Comfort, Episode: s11e16 Derek, Established Relationship, Fluff, Insomnia, M/M, Non-Canon Relationship, One Shot, One Shot Collection, POV Alternating, POV David, POV Derek, POV Spencer Reid, Presumed Dead, Sad Spencer Reid, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24185542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyn_00/pseuds/cyn_00
Summary: Fluffy one-shot based onseason 11, episode 16("Derek"). I already did "Derek afraid of losing Spencer" (one shot 9), well this is basically the other way around + Rossi being a dad instead of Hotch
Relationships: Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid
Series: Moreid one shots [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1746199
Comments: 4
Kudos: 115





	11 - "hold on to that"

**Author's Note:**

> I usually can't STAND cheesy fluff with other ships but look- this is what these two do to me,,, smh  
> Also: this is OBVIOUSLY medically inaccurate. Waking up from a 7-day coma and immediately talk/hug/smooch would be quite the challenge

_This is the episode where Derek is abducted and tortured, and stays in a coma for 3 days - but we're gonna pretend it was a little longer than that ;)_

_[Link to the same fic on Tumblr](https://cyn-00.tumblr.com/post/617197115861614592/moreid-one-shot-11) _

* * *

It was a gloomy, rainy late-afternoon. Reid had been sitting on that crappy, plastic chair for the past 3 hours and 11 minutes: he arrived at the hospital half an hour before the consented visiting hour - at 2:30 pm - during which he stood outside staring at the entrance with his umbrella in hand, under the pouring rain.

That had been his routine for the last 7 days: going to work to do some desk job - Hotch had made it possible for the team to not be busy in any new cases for a week after Derek's... _incident_ \- and coming to the hospital as soon as he got out, which, most of the times, was too late. Still, he persevered to quickly pass by every single day, regardless of the time, even if it was just to ask the nurse or Derek's doctor how he was doing. And the answer he received was always the same, along the lines of: he's stable, there's not really much way of accurately knowing when he'll wake up, but it could be approximately within a couple of weeks at worst. _At worst_. Like even just one, single day wouldn't be bad already.

In all of this, sleeping was obviously not involved. Only a couple of nights Spencer had managed to fall asleep, but he'd been woken up after 3 or 4 hours by the same nightmare: the doctor telling him that Derek was cerebrally dead.

It was more often during work, or during his endless hours of sitting in Derek's room, that he'd unconsciously fallen asleep, interrupted a few minutes later by a concerned JJ or Hotch, or by the fictitious sensation that Derek had finally woken up.

And that afternoon specifically, the weather wasn't contributing to making the sleep deprivation + almost complete loss of hope situation any better.

He hadn't really spoken to anyone on the team about what was going on inside his head, even though JJ and Penelope had tried several times to make him spill it out, and had eventually given up. Let alone his mom - to whom he was used to write letters, telling her all those things he couldn't bring himself to tell the others - who didn't even know what had happened to Derek in the first place.

He shut down like he always did in situations like this, partly because if he started opening up to someone about how he was feeling, he would irredeemably fall apart, like a small breach in the tarmac that one day, out of nowhere, could cause it to completely tear in half; partly because letting other people know what he was feeling would make them in some way witnesses of things and concerns and scenarios that, until that point, had only existed in his mind, making everything "real". As if what had happened to Derek wasn't _real_ already.

Almost every day, at a certain point, some other member of the team would join Reid at the hospital, mostly to check on him rather than on Morgan. Penelope would even _talk_ to Derek, since the doctor had told them that he probably could hear them. Spencer had tried to do that the first couple of days, when he was still hopeful and trusting of "the process" and all that motivational, optimistic and quite questionable stuff that Penelope had fed them with all these years, everytime something bad happened.

But then he gave up. He didn't even know what to say to him: did it make any sense to ramble about his day, when there wasn't Morgan around to make it interesting? To make it worth living? No, it didn't, Reid answered to himself, trying not to give in to such cheesy thoughts, constantly failing and starting to cry over Derek's bedsheets.

But it was 5:41 pm, and nobody had showed up yet. Reid didn't even know whether he'd hoped for that to happen or not. It didn't make that much of a difference to him, looking at Morgan's unconscious body alone or with someone, except for the fact that in the first case he didn't have to worry about the embarrassment of bursting out crying and the other person trying to comfort him.

Spencer finally shifted his eyes away from the wall in front of him, and lifted his chair up to place it even closer to the bed. He stared at Derek for a while and gulped, trying to rehydrate his desert-like dry mouth.

"Just wake up." he simply whispered, like it was an order.

He sighed as his eyes started to fill up with tears - again. If he didn't know the physiological process behind the act of crying, he would wonder - like a kid would probably do - how someone's eyes could produce so many tears in such a short time period, multiple times, without running out of them.

" _Wake up for me_." he pleaded once again.

Spencer reached out for his hand, holding it tight, like if he squeezed it as hard as he could maybe he would trigger in it the muscular response of squeezing back. He didn't really believe that, of course, but he had been struggling to spot the difference between what was real and what wasn't, probably because of the sleep deprivation.

Feeling the coldness in Derek's hand made him let out a sudden cry he didn't know he'd been holding inside his lungs, screwing his eyes close until the first tear wetted his cheek and gave in to dropping his forehead heavily on the mattress.

At some point, Reid shot up from his seat abruptly, making the legs of the chair screech against the floor, and stormed out of the room, without even bothering to close the door.

He quickly headed to the restroom down the hallway, struggling to even walk straight because of the dizziness the combination of getting up so fast and the blinding light of the neon lamps was causing him.

"...Spencer?" he thought he heard a male's voice from behind, not able to identify exactly whom it belonged to. He didn't turn around, guessing that it was probably the umpteenth hallucination of Derek's voice calling out his name. He couldn't afford to believe that again. He would fall apart altogether.

He got in the bathroom and made his way to the first stall available, locking himself in.

Spencer stood there, leaning with his back against the door, and started sobbing like a kid. He tried to make less noise possible, even though he had noticed no one was there as soon as he got in. But most of all he didn't really care anyway, at that point.

After a couple of minutes, he heard the door of the bathroom open, but no steps followed that noise. He immediately tried to pull himself together, wiping off the tears from his face with shaky hands and taking deep breaths.

The unknown man started to walk exactly toward his stall. By the sound the soles of his shoes made on the floor ceramic tiles and the rhythm of his pace, it finally came to Spencer's mind who said man was, figuring he must have also been the one calling his name in the hallway a few minutes before.

Spencer turned around and looked down, seeing the man's feet from the gap between the floor and the door. As he had imagined, he saw a pair of Blundstones, black, worn out and still slightly wet from the pouring rain outside: they were Rossi's.

 _"Come on, Spencer. I know you're in there."_ David said softly through the closed door, breaking such cold silence and giving Spencer the final clue that, as a matter of fact, he had guessed correctly.

Spencer turned around with a sigh, closing his eyes and placing a hand on the doorknob but waiting a few seconds before coming out. As if a few seconds were enough to prepare himself for the kind of talk he was well aware was expecting him. Specifically Rossi's type of talk who, as the older member of the team, was kind of a father figure to all of them - besides from Hotch, to whom he was a best friend and an older brother at the same time. To Spencer, Rossi had in some way replaced Gideon, even if not completely - evidence of that was in his reaction to the latter's death, a year and a half before - and Gideon, in turn, had in many ways replaced Reid's actual dad.

So, the "Rossi talk" wasn't that much different from a dad talk; even though, much to his defeat, Reid had to admit he didn't actually know what a dad talk sounded like.

Spencer finally came out and saw him, a cup of coffee in his hand and an expression of deep concern on his face.

He immediately looked down at his feet, putting his hands in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie - which, by the way, wasn't actually HIS hoodie. It was Derek's. And that was the first thing Rossi noticed, since in 9 years that he'd known Spencer, he'd never seen him wearing a hoodie - and Rossi's memory was notoriously matchless. If one doesn't count Reid's memory, that is - of course. There was another thing that David noticed, about the hoodie: there were a couple of drops of something wet on it, clearly standing out on the light grey fabric. Tears, he figured - although to be fair he could've guessed Reid had been crying just by the swelling and flush of his eyes.

David affectionately put a hand on Spencer's cheek, interrupting the silence.

"Son," he sighed "You know he IS gonna wake up, eventually, right? You _must_ know that." he paused, receiving no answer from Spencer, verbal or physical what so ever. "The doctor said he will wake up. You're too smart a kid not to understand that that's what you need to hold on to." he added.

Spencer raised his eyes to finally look back at him, trying not to get too affected by the worried and melancholic gaze the man was directing toward him.

"I-I'm trying-" he paused to clear his voice "-to hold on to that. But seeing him like that..." he gulped, feeling the lump building up in his throat again and his voice getting uncontrollably shaky. "Knowing that he is alive, but then I look at him and he seems-" he swallowed the word 'dead' before it could come out of his mouth. "...you know?"

"I know." Rossi replied. "But I also know that deep down you don't wanna give up, even if you feel like it." he gently patted on Spencer's cheek.

"You can't give up on Derek, kiddo." he concluded, making Spencer clench his jaw and his heart miss a beat when he mentioned Derek's name out loud.

"Yeah. I-I know that too." Spencer said, so low his voice barely came out steady, nodding like he was trying to convince himself of that more than he was trying to convince Rossi.

They stayed in silence for a while, Spencer still unable to look directly into the other man's pupils.

"Oh, by the way, this was supposed to be for you, but I guess it's disgustingly cold now..." Rossi said trying to lift up the mood a little bit, while handing him the coffee. There was no way of convincing Spencer that he needed to go home and get some sleep - not that he would've managed to, anyway - so David figured that, at that point, he might as well just help him stay up with caffeine, since that was Spencer's plan no matter what.

"Thanks..." Reid smiled shortly as he took the cup, trusting that Rossi would understand that he wasn't thanking him so much for the coffee, rather for his always pragmatical way of supporting him. Or everyone on the team, really.

"Let's head back now, shall we?" Rossi said checking his watch, implying that, maybe, staying in that cold and quite sad hospital restroom wasn't the best way of spending the last hour left of visiting time.

They got out and made their way back to Derek's room, through the empty hallway.

When they were 6 ft away, Spencer heard a voice coming from the room direction. Again, he thought he was dreaming of it.

But once he got only a couple feet from the door, he not only could hear the voice more clearly, recognizing it was the doctor's: he also noticed the door was now closed, recalling he did _not_ close it.

"...am I going crazy or someone's talking in there?" Rossi asked from behind, frowning.

Spencer froze, staring at the door handle with goggly eyes and his mouth hanging open.

"Did- did you close the door?" he asked, without even turning around.

"What?- No, I never even got in in the first place." Rossi replied, quite confused by the question, wondering why it mattered.

Spencer finally opened the door.

He saw the doctor listening to Derek's breathing with his stethoscope, interrupting himself as soon as he heard the door opening.

"S-Spencer?" Derek mumbled with a hoarse voice, unable to see 100% clearly, partly because of the 7-day coma - of course - partly because the room was quite dark from the cloudy weather outside.

"Doctor Reid! Here you are." the doctor greeted, wearing a wide smile as he approached the two.

"He's stable and perfectly fine, as you can see. He woke up about 10 minutes ago and called me with the button..." he gesticulated, turning his head around to smile reassuringly at Derek "...since no one was here. We still have to periodically visit him and run some blood tests before determining when you can bring him home." the doctor paused, seeing that Spencer was frozen in spot and staring at Derek with an empty expression, while Rossi was the only one actually listening.

"...but we can discuss all this later, anytime. Now we're gonna leave them alone, right agent Rossi?" he concluded politely, patting his hand on Spencer's shoulder.

"Absolutely." David answered, with his phone already in hand to call Hotch, affectionately waving at Derek while the doctor held the door open.

The second the men shut the door behind them and left the other two alone, Spencer felt his eyes tingling again, his breath shaking; attempting to gather all his self control not to drop the coffee on the floor and run toward Derek to hug him.

Instead, he somewhat managed to almost composedly make his way to sit on the bed, beside him, putting the cup on the nightstand.

"Derek-" he called out his name, whispering, like he couldn't believe it was really him. Finally, he got to wrap his arms around the other man, who was still laying down on the bed; squeezing him so tight he could've broken his ribs and sobbing loudly against his neck.

Derek shut his eyes close, feeling his bottom lip slightly trembling and the tears run down his temples to sink into the pillow, as he held Spencer's head close to him with his fingers tied in his hair.

"I-I'm so sorry, kid- I'm so sorry" Derek whispered between sobs.

Spencer let go of - probably - their longest hug ever, wiping away the tears with his sleeve and cupping Derek's face in his hands.

"Don't. This was never you fault. I'm not mad at you." he comforted him, sniffling, while wiping off Derek's tears too, once again with "his" hoodie sleeve.

Spencer leaned closer again, this time to finally kiss him.

"W-wait" Derek stopped him a second after, when his lips were already brushing against Spencer's, having a hard time breathing properly in that position. He pulled himself up to sit, adjusting the pillow behind his back with a slight grimace of pain on his face.

"Better" he said, taking Spencer back in his arms, being able to finally kiss him the way he wanted to.

He put his hand behind his neck to get deeper, and as soon as he allowed his tongue to find its way into his warm, comforting mouth, he felt the slightly salty taste of Spencer's tears spreading into his.

Derek broke the kiss way before he'd wished to, due to his short breath - it took him a few minutes of inhaling and exhaling heavily against Spencer's damp lips to steady it out.

Once he'd managed to get a hold of his breathing, he leaned back on the pillow to take a better look at Spencer with heavy eyelids and a hand on his jaw, stroking his chin with his thumb.

Spencer stared back at him with big eyes and a silly smile on his face, for something like 3 full minutes, until Derek's voice finally breached through the homely silence of the room.

"Alright, you're looking at me like I fell from heaven. I just got out of a 7-day coma, this is _not_ my best shape, just so you know" he said jokingly, while straightening up with his back.

Spencer giggled and looked down.

"Sorry. It's just- I feel like I'm dreaming..." he replied.

Derek's contagious smile gradually turned into a more serious expression. Now that his vision had cleared out, as the sky outside had, after the rain - _"what a fucking cliché"_ , he thought - he could see how exhausted his boyfriend was. His lips were dry - but that, he'd already noticed when his tongue had brushed past them - his hazel eyes had lost that "glow" they always had, not to mention the already dark circles around them had never been _that_ dark, very much visible in comparison with the rest of his skin, paler than usual.

Derek leaned closer to him again, lifting Spencer's chin up with his finger.

"About that..." he sighed, his voice getting deeper. "...you haven't been sleeping much now, have you?" he asked, gently.

Reid's weakest spot was his sleeping pattern, so everytime he was going through a rough patch, that was the first thing that got messed up. Everyone on the team knew that, but Morgan in particular played a big role in it, willingly or not - even before they were a couple. Another symptom of Spencer not being well, that was maybe a little less obvious to the others, was a massive increase in his already above average consume of caffeine, instead of actual food.

As that, too, popped into Derek's mind, it seemed to him that Spencer's cheeks were almost imperceptibly more hollow, if it was even possible for someone to get visibly thinner in just a week - like he wasn't skinny enough already, as his mom always pointed out. 

Spencer gulped nervously, adjusting his hair - also messier than usual - behind his ears.

"H-how could I sleep?" he asked rhetorically, his smile fading away as he was having a hard time bearing with the sad look Derek was giving him.

Derek didn't answer: there was no way he - or anybody - could blame him for not being able to sleep. He wouldn't have managed to sleep either if the same thing that happened to him had happened to Spencer. God, he couldn't even THINK of such a thing happening the other way around.

"Derek uhm- even though the doctor told me you _were_ going to wake up, that- that's just not how I actually processed it." Spencer continued, now that his voice had got steadier and he'd found the courage to finally look him in the eyes, albeit with a frown.

"I knew that you would wake up eventually, not just because the doctor told us, but because I knew the physical damage you went through wasn't severe to the point- anyway, I _knew_ that. Deep down." he explained further, trying to break down for Derek what he had gone through the past week, but ending up rambling like he always did either when his brain was working faster than his words could keep up, or - as in this case - when he was uncomfortable and upset.

"In spite of that, at some point my mind took for granted that you were dead." he added, pausing to catch his breath and lower his voice. "...so I started functioning as if you _were_ dead. And to be honest it was one of the scariest things I've ever experienced." he concluded, trying with all his strength not to start crying again.

All those things that Spencer was saying, made Derek feel like his heart was being shattered with a hammer, and his stomach was being tied in a tight knot; a rising sensation akin to flat-out _guilt_. He rubbed his face with a palm, trying to wrap his mind around what Spencer must have gone through.

"I-I can't even begin to imagine what you had to go through, Spencer, but I'm here now and-" he shook his head vigorously, as if forcibly attempting to cut himself off mid-phrase, shutting his eyes. "this is- this is all my fault, I'm so, _so_ sorry Spencer I don't know how to make it up to you I-"

"Nonono, no, that's not what I'm saying" Spencer interrupted him immediately, taking his hand - the one not bandaged - and entwining their fingers together securely. "That's the OPPOSITE of what I mean. _I_ am the one who's sorry, f- for- for giving up on you so quickly... I didn't do it on purpose though, it's like a defense mechanism that my mind employs to numb itself, I- I lose hope to try and get closure, you know that's what I do- I just don't want you to think that I did that out of not-" Spencer blurted out, almost choking on that last bit. He shifted his eyes down, stroking the back of Derek's hand with his thumb as a way of calming himself.

"I- I didn't do it out of not _loving_ you. Because I do- I love you. You know that- a- at least I hope you do." his chin was trembling visibly by the time he had concluded.

Derek stayed silent throughout Spencer's whole speech, not knowing how to phrase that he had absolutely no fault in all this, what so ever. In actuality, nobody did, beside the people who hurt him - who hurt _all_ of them.

"I know." he finally answered, simply. "And you don't owe anybody any explanation. Especially me." Derek told him gently, his eyes watery. "and- and I love you, too. _So_ much."

Spencer nodded, smiling lopsidedly.

After a moment of silence, enough to lift some of the weight resting heavily on their hearts, Derek spoke up again.

"You can keep the hoodie, by the way. There are probably more of my clothes in _your_ closet than in mine." he said, smiling a little.

"Yeah, It's enormous for me though!" Spencer giggled, pulling at the fabric of the hoodie to show him how loose it hung on his skinny torso.

"...but it has your smell..." he added, shrugging timidly.

Derek grinned even wider and cocked his head. What the hell did he do to deserve such a precious human being?

He shifted closer to place soft, smiley pecks on his boyfriend's temple, and cheek, and chin.

"It looks real good on you" _kiss_ "pretty boy" _kiss_ "if you ask me" yet another kiss, as his fingers ran through Spencer's hair and caressed his nape, making him slightly ticklish.

"O-okay-" he answered, chuckling and wishing he didn't stop.

But they heard a knock on the door. Spencer gently pulled him away looking down at his watch: visiting hour would be over in 20 minutes - _of course_ the others were coming. He turned his head around, looking at the door over his shoulder; still feeling his heart beating like crazy in his chest.

 _"Hey you guys, we're coming iiin!"_ JJ's joyful voice got louder as she slowly opened the door, followed by Penelope, Rossi, Hotch and Tara.

Now that they were all inside, greeting him cheerfully, Derek saw Penelope was holding a bunch of colorful balloons in her hand - not surprisingly, if he had to be honest. Nonetheless, they needed her exactly as she was.

"Look at my boys! So pretty and happy!!" she squealed, wearing the biggest smile ever and walking toward them with her arms spread open, ready to snuggle them both in one of her signature bone-crushing hugs.

Spencer turned his head again to face Derek briefly, before they could be squeezed into said hug.

They stared into each other's eyes, smiling like two kids.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: @cyn-00


End file.
